L-arginine:inosamine-P amidinotransferase(s)

Enzymology of aminoglycoside biosynthesis-deduction from gene clusters

The classical aminoglycosides are, with very few exceptions, typically actinobacterial secondary metabolites with antimicrobial activities all mediated by inhibiting translation on the 30S subunit of the bacterial ribosome. Some chemically related natural products inhibit glucosidases by mimicking oligo-alpha-1,4-glucosides. The biochemistry of the aminoglycoside biosynthetic pathways is still a developing field since none of the pathways has been analyzed to completeness as yet. In this chapter we treat the enzymology of aminoglycoside biosyntheses as far as it becomes apparent from recent investigations based on the availability of DNA sequence data of biosynthetic gene clusters for all major structural classes of these bacterial metabolites. We give a more general overview of the field, including descriptions of some key enzymes in various aminoglycoside pathways, whereas in Chapter 20 provides a detailed account of the better-studied enzymology thus far known for the neomycin and butirosin pathways.

The ligand-induced structural changes of human L-Arginine:Glycine amidinotransferase. A mutational and crystallographic study

Human L-arginine:glycine amidinotransferase (AT) shows large structural changes of the 300-flap and of helix H9 upon binding of L-arginine and L-ornithine, described as a closed and an open conformation (Humm, A., Fritsche, E., Steinbacher, S., and Huber, R. (1997) EMBO J. 16, 3373-3385). To elucidate the structural basis of these induced-fit movements, the x-ray structures of AT in complex with the amidino acceptor glycine and its analogs gamma-aminobutyric acid and delta-aminovaleric acid, as well as in complex with the amidino donor analogs L-alanine, L-alpha-aminobutyric acid, and L-norvaline, have been solved at 2.6-, 2.5-, 2.37-, 2.3-, 2.5-, and 2.4-A resolutions, respectively. The latter three compounds were found to stabilize the open conformer. The glycine analogs bind in a distinct manner and do not induce the transition to the open state. The complex with glycine revealed a third binding mode, reflecting the rather broad substrate specificity of AT. These findings identified a role for the alpha-amino group of the ligand in stabilizing the open conformer. The kinetic, structural, and thermodynamic properties of the mutants ATDeltaM302 and ATDelta11 (lacks 11 residues of H9) confirmed the key role of Asn300 and suggest that in mammalian amidinotransferases, the role of helix H9 is in accelerating amidino transfer by an induced-fit mechanism. Helix H9 does not add to the stability of the protein.

Utilization of ornithine and arginine as specific precursors of clavulanic acid

Ornithine and arginine (5 to 20 mM), but not glutamic acid or proline, exerted a concentration-dependent stimulatory effect on the biosynthesis of clavulanic acid in both resting-cell cultures and long-term fermentations of Streptomyces clavuligerus. Ornithine strongly inhibited cephamycin biosynthesis in the same strain. [1-14C]-, [5-14C]-, or [U-14 C] ornithine was efficiently incorporated into clavulanic acid, whereas the incorporation of uniformly labeled glutamic acid was very poor. [U-14C] citrulline were not incorporated at all. Mutant nca-1, a strain that is blocked in clavulanic acid biosynthesis, did not incorporate arginine into clavulanic acid. S. clavuligerus showed arginase activity, converting arginine into ornithine, but not amidinotransferase activity. Both arginase activity and clavulanic acid formation were enhanced simultaneously by supplementing the production medium with 10 mM arginine.